Rollouts and websites and redesigns and new versions
I’ve complained bitterly about the new Yahoo email, and I am not alone:
So many loyal Yahoo users are frustrated with the new interface. They used all possible words you can think of to describe their frustrations and anger: problematic, screwed up, upset, blew it big time, so bad, very frustrated, sucks, flawed, annoyed, absolute OUTRAGE, hate it, a pain in the a_ _, a complete mess, really and truly crap, a giant leap backwards, WORST redesign ever, the worst upgrade, disgusted, fed up, getting worse instead of better, absolutely horrible, terrible, awful, unbelievable, unusable, stupid, Done with yahoo, I am leaving Yahoo, Bye yahoo…
Yahoo has tweaked the redesign over and over, and virtually every single change has made it worse. They took away something that really worked, and “improved” it by taking away all the good features and adding every bad feature of g-mail, and then some that they’ve invented specially for this. If you want some of the awful details, look here.
In light of the Obamacare website debacle, I’ve been thinking about the whole question of designing something like that to be user-friendly, and why things are so likely to go wrong. After all, Yahoo isn’t the Obama administration or the government (it isn’t, is it? Tell me it isn’t). You’d think they could get it right. I realize that the problems inherent in Healthcare.gov are different then in a web email service, but I wonder whether some of the difficulties don’t stem from something about the mindset of the designers themselves.
Don’t want to step on any toes here, but perhaps these amazingly bright people (and I don’t mean that sarcastically) don’t think along the most practical of lines. Do they become entranced with some inside-baseball feature that only the geeky can appreciate, and ignore the way the minds of regular folk work?
Just as an example, I’ve noticed that the latest fad seems to be to hide things. Is it esthetics—do they like this because it gives the page a cleaner look? Or because it’s just plain nifty? You mouse over something and bingo, up pops something to click on as a way to get to something else (don’t even know if I’m using the right terms here, but I assume you know what I mean). But there was nothing about that word you had to mouse over in the first place that indicated the splendors hidden beneath it, so how were you supposed to know?
For example, on Yahoo email, the log-out tab is hidden. Why? Is it fun to have to make people go through an extra step in order to log out? Is that the way the designers get their jollies? It used to be the “sign out” button was right there in plain sight: click on it and you’re out. Now you have to mouse, and wait, and the big reveal doesn’t even work if everything hasn’t already loaded just right (and with new Yahoo email there’s often a long delay before that happens—if it ever happens).
Maybe the folks at Yahoo just have trouble saying good-bye. But my guess is that an awful lot of people have said a permanent goodbye to them. I’m not one of them—yet.
[NOTE: I just want to reiterate that I realize that the problems with the Obamacare website are not just worse, but are of a different order, and more basic. But I still wonder whether there’s something that makes it hard for IT people to understand how the minds of non-IT-people work.
Here’s an interesting piece on whether it’s the IT people or something else.
And according to this, Yahoo’s redesign of its sports site has provoked a similar reaction: rage. Whatever happened to “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? I think that, with the re-design of the email, Yahoo is trying to emulate its competitor, gmail. Apparently, with the redesign of the sports page, it’s trying to emulate something about Apple. So, earth to Yahoo: stop imitating. Build on the unique characteristics that have drawn users to you. Have faith in yourself, Yahoo!]
Sounds like PJM’s “improved” comment system.
I think constant Web site changes are largely due to “the mindset of the designers themselves.” I’ve seen this up close on several jobs I’ve had since the 1990s. Designers simply can’t resist using every bell & whistle that comes down the pike, which means they have got to be kept under control by savvy managers. Unfortunately, not too many managers seem to have that necessary savvy.
A mystery to me, though, at least as far as Yahoo is concerned, is why the focus groups they hire haven’t told them the changes are horrible. Assuming they use focus groups, which is standard.
I think the new fad is ‘minimalist’, as in the best way not to confuse people with choices it to hide everything. Gmail is doing that also. Apart from the faddish aspect, I think we are seeing the influence of smart phones and other small devices.
chuck:
Well, I find it frustrating beyond belief.
I have no interest in playing hide and seek at websites.
Chuck has nailed it.
All of the changes are oriented towards how the pages display on smart phones, which have such a limited display.
At a fundamental level, Yahoo should’ve provided smart phones with a FREE application that reformats the top layer at the smart phone, leaving the original code as is.
This app would tap additional cloud resources — the Yahoo server farm — so that the app need not be huge while the interface could be tweeked even if the hand set is not rebooted.
A separate app could be established for tablets, too.
This permits the Yahoo cloud to know what the client target is so that the screen image is appropriate.
They screwed up.
They went with a one-size-fits-all coding.
It’s the Bed of Procrustes all over again.
blert:
I bet that’s it.
Many tech companies don’t actually have much of a design process — Yahoo is one of them. Google’s design process is pretty haphazard, though I’ve heard it is improving. Apple is famous for design. It’s not easy — programmers often don’t design things well, yet many Internet services suffer from “programmer design”.
Yahoo’s bigges tproblem with me was the right side ad that keeps popping up. I’d prefer windows which I can close vs that.
Because it prevents me from actually reading various things that are very long or longer than 1 paragraph at least. Have to make an entire new tab, inside of the web tab, for that.
It’s a bit like some German engineers: they love to overdesign. My stove exhaust filters don’t get cleaned to often because it is very difficult to get them back in place (1/2 hour). And I bought a new small vacuum cleaner a few years ago, which I thought would be easier to take up and down stairs. After a few months, I had to toss it because I hadn’t situated the filter bags properly and dirt landed in the motor. I read and followed the instruction manual each time I changed the bag, but apparently that wasn’t sufficient to get a tight fit. I sometimes wonder whether these designers want every ordinary person to worship their genius each time we use their projects.
I also want to have access to products that don’t expect me to be on Facebook or gaming 24/7.
MSN/Hotmail does the same sign-out.
And what’s the deal with Yahoo’s new logo? The old one was so much better… what the hell were they thinking?
There are so many things wrong with the redesign, it boggles the mind. I’ve had yahoo email for 14 or 15 years and I’m seriously considering switching.
Paying for Yahoo Plus has saved me over the years: I can download to outlook on my PC and get no ads. However, they’ve raised it from 19.99 to $40 or so. I’m grand fathered in though – I’d never pay that much.
While I think they might react to some complaints, the old style is probably gone for good. As far as designers – most developers can’t predict how real people will interact with various pages/screens. It’s just the nature of the beast and works across all industries. The Google Chick who is now in charge seems to have brought over google’s success.
The groupings of emails (into a conversation) annoys me to no end.
I’m tempted to get a cheap domain or website and use my outlook on that only. Even stuff you pay for changes (yahoo Plus!) and I don’t like change for change’s sake.
JuliB:
I feel the same way.
But why is it so hard to find out how people interact with it? Don’t they test it out on a group (a large group, if need be) and ask for feedback?
And why not allow people choices? For example, I hate the conversations thing, too. That’s why I hate gmail, among other reasons. So why can’t people have a setting to choose where the conversations don’t happen? Of course, they might even have something like that available, but who can find it?
It’s a difficult problem.
If you have a lot of features, you need to let the user get to them somehow. If you do this by putting an icon on the screen for each feature, though, the screen is so cluttered that the user can’t find anything.
Experienced users may know where to find their favorite features, but new users will have trouble even figuring out that a feature exists and is available if things get too cluttered. One common problem with “mature” user interfaces is that they started out clean and easy to navigate, and features got added over time, so the screen now looks like the feature-request list vomited all over it. For the experienced users, this isn’t so bad: they started out back when the UI was simple, and saw features added one at a time over years, so they still know where everything is. But for new users faced with such a UI, it’s a nightmare.
The current approach is to hide features until they’re needed. The idea has a long and illustrious history (it’s where we get menus: instead of displaying each option, group them and just display the group name, so clicking the menu name shows all the options for it). BUT… it depends on understanding user interactions so well that you can predict exactly when the user will need a certain option, and what they’ll be doing at that moment, so you can show the relevant options when the user is mousing over a particular thing on the screen, or whatever.
When this works, it works very well: the user gets the feeling of dealing with a clean user interface, where it’s clear what to do, and the program magically displays the options you need right when you need them. Done well, it feels like the computer is reading your mind. But it’s very, very difficult to do well.
To avoid problems in UI design, it is traditional to do user testing: you bring in a number (the more the better) of ordinary users, preferably with all different levels of experience and various mindsets and motivations. (Testing a word processor, you might want office workers, people writing a dissertation, etc.) You sit each of them them in front of the software and you ask them to do some of the tasks they normally would do, and encourage them to voice their reactions as they go (“How do I make this bold? Where’s the… oh, there it is. I was expecting to see it next to this other related thing.”). Ideally, you videotape the interaction along with what’s happening on the screen, and later review it in detail.
What this does is test whether your assumptions about what users find natural and easy hold up with actual users (who aren’t you). It is humbling and distressing to watch a user look at the screen and then do exactly the wrong thing because your design is ambiguous in ways you didn’t realize… but can see immediately once you see a user going down the wrong path. Doing this early and often, and feeding the results back into the design process, will greatly reduce gotchas and annoyances, and done with care and insight can also lead to good innovations.
Unfortunately, user testing is expensive and somewhat difficult. (Developers can do it but they have trouble not giving the user hints. It’s best done by a separate group of people.) So it’s often not done at all and rarely done well.
jaed:
“Rarely done well”—I can definitely believe it.
I understand your explanation of why so many things are hidden. But why hide the most basic things a person might use all the time? It’s annoying to have to take an extra step, even after you know where the thing is. And in the case of Yahoo email, it’s even more annoying, cause the hidden things won’t appear—even if you put your mouse in the right place—till the whole page is completely loaded. And it’s very slow at that, so you sit there waiting and waiting.
Horrible. And that’s just the beginning. Just for example, now when I view a photo in Yahoo email, the “close” button won’t work after I’ve finished looking. I have to close the whole shebang to get it to close the photo.
I don’t use Yahoo! (see? I included the exclamation point!), but I’m guessing it’s a case of “Jobs envy.”
You hint that they’re trying to emulate Apple, but Apple itself is trying to emulate Steve Jobs…and from what I’ve heard, not doing a great “job” of it.
Jobs’ genius was in creating functional design; features that were intuitive to use and enhanced the user’s experience. They weren’t just put in there for show.
Maybe this is another example (in a different context) of Reynolds’ Law; of mistaking markers of success for the causes of success.
I have a yahoo mail account, but rarely use it. 99% of my e-mail interactions are through fastmail.us. They have good security (I have not received spam for 2 years) and there are very few bells and whistles to make me cranky. I like plain, simple, and minimal changes to confuse me.
As a veteran of some of the more spectacular systems fiascos of the 80’s, I would direct your attention to the tried and true Project Management technique of lying your ass off.
I’m a software designer for a Fortune 500 company. Some of us are good, and some are not. In the company I work for every design is reviewed by the end users to make sure it’s what they wanted, then peer reviewed by the other designers for integration and standards, then reviewed by the developers to be sure it’s possible, then picked to shreds by the QA team who will not hesitate to tell you what they really think. I always wonder how some of these websites, like those you’re talking about and healthcare.gov of course, ever see the light of day.
Excellent points all.
Other possible factors are elitist egotism, why should ‘experts’ listen to the peons? And/or unrealistic job requirements in time and resources devoted to the task.
“I always wonder how some of these websites, like those you’re talking about and healthcare.gov of course, ever see the light of day.”
There is the adage “good enough for government work” and I suspect this is the root of the opening of Obamacare debacle. Its the Solyndra blues again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0CZIlirojA
Can this really be the end to be stuck inside Mobile with the Obamacare blues again?
neo-neocon, if I recall, if you reply to a mail and erase the title and body, it won’t be able to chain it into the conversation log.
http://reason.com/blog/2013/10/23/internet-privacy-company-ends-service-to
Soon, even Mitsu will be able to experience the glory of the Democrat Utopia he supported.
I hate the conversations thing, too.
Depends on what you are doing, I suppose. For interactive group work, where there might be several projects going on, they provide a useful organization. I participate in several open source projects hosted on github and having my mail organized into threads helps. Bottom posting is also the norm on the associated email lists, but gmail has made that more difficult. Grrr.
You have a job to improve something, so you improve it whether it needs it or not.
A friend has an ivy league undergraduate degree in anthropology and makes her living in IT, mediating between designers and users. She said her degree is a perfect fit….
blert
Which also pretty well describes the differences between Windows 7 and Windows 8. Windows 7 was designed for desktops and laptops. I found Windows 7 more user friendly than XP – on my desktop- so it wasn’t a superfluous change for me.
Windows 8 is basically Windows 7 dressed up to fit on smaller screens. If you use a desktop or laptop, Windows 8 is not only superfluous, from what I have read, it is a pain in the posterior. Unless you learn whatever tricks there are to make it user friendly. But if you have to learn those little tricks, it isn’t very user friendly.
It sounds to me as if Yahoo didn’t test its “improvements” sufficiently on some focus groups. After all, the customer is always right. At least Yahoo believes that – or knows it should believe it.
The Obamacare rollout snafu gives the impression that the government looked at focus groups the way a drill sergeant looks at a recruit in basic training. The drill sergeant is always right; the recruit is always wrong unless he obeys the drill sergeant heart and soul. Not the customer is always right. Medical care as run by a drill sergeant- that is what we are looking forward to with Obamacare.
It’s not just software. My Miata came with a Bose stereo. Good technolgy, but they couldn’t build user interface if their life depended on it. What moron thinks “skip” track means I want to the whole system to drop out of “random”?
Every time, I drive the car, even though I avoid manipulating the MP3 at all, I curse Bose. I just burn a new disk with songs I don’t have to be in the mood for. Worse, Mazda made a mistake as well as it angers me over their product by imposing the Bose on me as part of the package.
I fortunately, barely use Yahoo mail so my disgust at Yahoo is much rarer.
I’ve been using Outlook on Exchange for years.
…but that said: I have Yahoo accounts that are older (I’m still a member of several Yahoo groups). I have Hotmail accounts that date back to before Microsoft acquired Hotmail.
And I have Gmail (I have MANY Gmail accounts, for support uses); I rather like Gmail due to Android, and Chrome, and due to the apps. I’m going to get a Chromebook sooner or later.
But none compare with the continuity over the years of using Outlook over Exchange.
These days, and even for my small business clients (and moreso, as SBS is being discontinued), I just have them get Office 365.
$7/mo or so per account.
And buy the Outlook application (well, these days, you subscribe to Outlook); I’d recommend buying Outlook 2007/2010. Although the Outlook web app is excellent.
All email apps, especially cloud apps, have issues.
But the continuity and familiarity of using Outlook for a dozen plus years, in all its iterations, has made my complex email setup (all my major email accounts are funneled into Outlook …essentially, this includes the Office 365 account, three Hotmail accounts, and the Gmail account …I haven’t really used any of my ISP provided email accounts – nor would I recommend the practice – and Yahoo was never used for anything except to logon to the Yahoo Groups I belong to …and also include administrative email accounts at client offices that I monitor for support purposes) easily accomplished using Outlook.
(And if I’d ever actually used Yahoo-as-email, I’d have paid the then-$20 just so I could add the account to Outlook.)
The benefit of familiarity with the Outlook UI has made it invaluable.
I also use Yahoo and was really annoyed with the change, to the point I was thinking of switching to something else. But there is a way to disable some of their more idiotic “improvements”, so I’ve managed to make it tolerable, if not exactly just how I’d like it to be.
The conversation thing was the worst of the changes, that thing really frustrated me, but you can turn it off.
Patrick:
Please tell me the secret to disabling all that stuff!! I am very serious. Or tell me where you find the secret. I’ve looked, and even tried to do away with the conversations, but they kept creeping back.
Is there a secret to getting back to the feature where you could work on several emails at a time? I loved that.
And can you get the “back” button to work? With the new format, my back button only take me back to the inbox, no matter where I really was previously.
neo…
“turn off conversations??? = close the window and log out.]
*if you don’t want unwanted chat conversation, set your privacy preference setting NOT to allow anybody to contact you who are not in your messenger list
Messenger > Preference > Privacy > tick boxes not to receive requests from any person not in your list. click Ok to apply. ”
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101228222843AAGkNHW
}}}} For example, on Yahoo email, the log-out tab is hidden. Why? Is it fun to have to make people go through an extra step in order to log out?
At a guess, part of it is Apple’s fault.
Yes, Apple.
Apple has this thing against closing programs. In fact, if you submit an app to the web store with an “exit” button, they’ll reject it. iP Apps aren’t supposed to “close”. You just look away at something else, and they never close.
Yes, that’s beyond retarded. Apparently, YOU don’t actually know when you’re done with something.
But it’s how Apple does things.
So, I would suspect that this is along the same lines — “logging out” is kind of like turning it off.
BAD USER!!
BAD!
BAD!
“…I’ve noticed that the latest fad seems to be to hide things. Is it esthetics–do they like this because it gives the page a cleaner look?”
Yes, it’s a kind of obsessive minimalism and I’m also really sick of it. Did you notice that Google recently “simplified” its main search page? Like everyone was just overwhelmed by all that confusing clutter–NOT.
At first I didn’t realize all the functionality was hidden behind a 3×3 grid of square dots in the upper right corner, so I typed Google maps into the Google search page!
Evidently I wasn’t the only fool who didn’t realize a 3×3 grid of dots means Menu Selections Here (isn’t it obvious?) because the first item in the drop-down selections (after typing “goo”) was … Google Maps.
Re Hiding the “Log Out” or “Exit” button.
My theory is the longer you’re trapped in Yahoo mail (or some other app), the more ads they can throw at you.
Gary…
They’re in a position to data mine your interests.
That’s where the new money is found.
Such meta data can be sold and re-sold endlessly to ad agencies.
It’s ‘found’ money for Yahoo.
Google did it first, IIRC.
It’s what funds the free browsers out there.
It isn’t just IT for desktops, smartphones, and web-based software that is messed up. I just bought a new car with a navigation system – and there is no “OFF” button for the radio.
There is a “mute” which is fine except that it will also mute the navigation voice.
Normally, the volume button will control the radio, the navigation voice, and the CD player volumes each seperately depending upon which is being used. However, the mute function will mute all three!
In order to have the radio “off” yet still hear the navigation voice commands I have to do a work around such as play a CD, put it on pause” so that there is no sound and then I can hear the nav voice. If I try to mute the radio or the CD then the Nav voice also mutes!
Whoever designed this needs a frontal lobotomy. It is so crazy it makes me want to drive the car through the dealership window!
So, you’re hearing it here first. If/when I have to sign up for Obamacare and the system is still a nightmare; and you hear in the news that someone threw their PC at the White House – you’ll know it was me!
Neo – Under Settings (that gear thing in the upper right hand corner) go to Viewing E mail, and then uncheck the Conversations Box. If they hadn’t allowed that to be undone, that was probably it for me and Yahoo e mail.
If anyone figures out how to view multiple e mails, I’d like to hear it. Who in the world at Yahoo thought it would be good to remove those tabs for multiple e mails? When stuff like this redesign happens that is so bad, I always wonder if the people doing it even use their own product.
I feel much the same way about the redesign at Legal Insurrection which looks horrible on IE (which I prefer by default), although nice on Firefox.
The “hidden options” and “context sensitive” stuff is my biggest complaint with gmail. (Well, after the privacy concerns.) I hate not having those options visible at all times. I don’t mind the clutter because I can plan ahead. I’d rather have that information out in the open than have to guess at how the programming guys plotted it all out.
Oh, and @Gary, it took me a few days to find my Google Drive spreadsheets after they tucked everything behind that little grid icon. Such a stupid design.
Marketing takes over and then forces dilberts to do things that dont work, and all because its new, or they think its new.
i remember one came in and said…
lets make F6 the help key
i said why? everyone knows f1 is help (etc)
oh… well, we are going to set a new standard for the world to follow!!!!
by changing default keys to confuse people?
*
Patrick – that bit of advice just helped 2 people (maybe more) in addition to Neo.
The gear thingy is something I have on a lot of my android apps for settings, but I managed not to see it.
I switched my mail from slim to moderate – not sure what that does. And then there was a Basic choice too – I was too scared to change that since it said when I hit SAVE it would update the page. I decided to hold off to another day for that one.
Expat, I have worked for a large German company for almost 30 years so I understand exactly what you mean by their tendency to over-design nearly everything. I am convinced that at headquarters, there is a large multistory building full of engineers. Some are geniuses. Most are average. But a sizable minority are absolute idiots.
As to Yahoo! mail, I don’t use it. I hate web based email for all of the issues described here. I use my ISP mail, and even though its web based version is available, I download it via a pop3 account and Outlook. Yeah, I know. I’m an old curmudgeon who is way behind all of the cool kidz with their smart phones, but it works and has worked for a very long time. (…not to mention it allows me to keep a local archive backup of everything.)
Have I mentioned that I *HATE* webmail?